not sure of the point

when you remake things like the last house on the left. the original is a pretty stupid movie, but at least the people doing the offensive things are unpleasant people—apart from david hess, who is (to me) weirdly charismatic even though he's as ugly as sin and seems to be equally as unpleasant on his off days as he is in his films—and this helps you when you're watching girls being forced to piss themselves, or to make out with each other at gun/knifepoint, or when krug and co. are disemboweling someone. the doofy tunes (courtesy of hess) and the comic relief cops are annoying, but whatever. the bad guys are ugly people doing ugly things. you see this. you know it.

this new last house strikes me as disingenuous, because everyone in it is pretty. it's dishonest. it takes out all the very unpleasant business—the pissing, the enforced making out, the disemboweling—and replaces it with a rape sequence that, were it not for the filth and the disturbing music, could potentially be seen as somewhat titillating.

i generally don't give a shit about things like this, but this new deal actually comes off as much sleazier in intent, and for me, much more upsetting than the original film. because someone out there will watch it, and buttons will get pushed, and you know, i can't really blame them. it's designed to excite, and then it's meant to make you feel bad for getting worked up. although you know rape is A Bad Thing and you know these people are supposed to be the living embodiment of Really Bad People, they're not even that violent and weird, just sort of libertine and naughty in their perversions.

they're hollywood homely, which is to say not homely at all, and everything is too perfect and pat and ultimately very stupid. it's not like when john vernon as the warden is getting it on with all the chicks in chained heat, and that you can shrug off because it IS grindhousey and goofy and linda blair is a pudgemonster—it would be upsetting if it was played straight but it's not. in this movie it is played straight and it means to upset you for reacting the way you do, because watching good looking semi-naked people in forests in long shot having doggy style sex can be fun to look at. some people may say this is the point, that you're supposed to see that nice looking people can do horrible things, that the swell guy up the block is actually a sexual thrill killer, but this movie isn't that fucking smart and i can't say that i credit any of them with that level of intelligence.

there was an element of 'they went looking for bad stuff and bad stuff happened' in the original; mari and phyllis are on their way to see a band called bloodlust (if memory serves) and they want to score pot along the way which leads them straight to david hess and the awesomely disgusting fred lincoln (who starred in and directed many a porn film after) which then leads them to an untimely end. right in front of mari's house. ooh, snap!

there's one truly brilliant moment in the film, and that's after they've killed the girls, and they all sort of stand around in a daze, looking awkward and fucked up. wes craven has said that this moment is meant to evoke a feeling of 'they were playing with a doll that had somehow become broken, and they didn’t know how to put it back together again.' i think that's a pretty good description of the action on screen, and rumor also has it that shooting that sequence was emotionally and physically draining for the actors, who didn’t talk much that day at lunch and didn't say much when they finally wrapped.

in this new version, mary is just a sweet young thing going to visit her friend, and her friend is the bad influence, and mary's also got an older brother who died and who…huh? who cares about character development? the people going to see this movie know what it's about. i can guarantee you. they don't give a shit if mary has a dead brother who really supported her and went to every single one of her swim team meets. they want to see Bad/Cool Stuff. anyhow, after they stab the bad influence buddy twice in the belly and rape mary the gang just head for the house, don't bother with character beats, this is the new school of filmmaking so fuck taking a moment to see their reactions. i can totally see everyone going and hanging after the shoot and having a beer, because you know, it was martini shot time, and they finally finished the allegedly 16? 17? hour day of rapetastic fun in the woods.

i'm not squeamish, and i'm not overly freaked out by rape in films, having been raised on a steady diet of both bodice rippers and true crime novels, but something about this just annoyed me to a degree that you can’t even believe.

the film goes on to concentrate on the collingwood's revenge, which has again been softened and taken down a notch from the original—mrs. collingwood no longer fellates weasel's dick off, she shoots him instead; sadie is just shot, junior is allowed to live and is in fact speedboated away from the titular house with the still living mary—only krug gets a semi-interesting death, which is that his head goes asplodey in a microwave (don't think that can actually happen). fine and good, i suppose, but i like the fact that in the original, sexual violence is met with sexual violence by the 'good' family and krug eventually gets it with a nice big phallic chainsaw from mr. collingwood. in a not very bright movie it was a nice and somewhat smart note to hit. this film doesn't even give you that, it falls back on the stellar setpieces of goretasmic awesomeness, which is ultimately boring.

even though the original is dumb, it's still better than this, and that's sort of saying something, because i've always felt that the original was given far more credit than it deserved in terms of its place in genre history. texas chainsaw? sure. last house? never so much.

i think that a lot of horror is trying to swing around back to the days of the seventies—the thrill of the sticky floored theater and the shock that you'd get when you'd see this kind of shit play out on the big screen. but the seventies are dead and gone, and there are no more grindhouses, and remaking a movie that has been long since surpassed in freakishness by your local nightly news is just dumb, and it bothered me, and i honestly haven’t felt this fucking aggravated by a movie in a long time.